She leaves Saturday for Kinshasa, the capitol of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa, and she’s going to bring one of those children back to Shelby County.

 

“I can’t not go,” says Terry. “This is my baby. I have to experience this with him.  I can’t wait to make him smile. We have yet to see a picture of him smiling.”

 

Megan and her husband, Kamron Terry, are in the process of adopting Dieudonne (who will be named Miles Dieudonne Terry) from the Jammu Letu orphanage in Lubumbashi, Katanga Province.  Dieudonne, pronounced DYE-oo-duh-nay, which means God’s Gift in French, was abandoned as an infant at the orphanage in July, 2009.  The orphanage assigned him a birth date of July 4, which, coincidentally, was the day the Terry’s signed their papers and officially began their adoption journey.

 

The Terrys are adopting Dieudonne after an inspirational, months-long process that has drawn them to the Congo, where, with the help of a volunteer-based adoption agency supported by Pacific Northwest Methodist Conference, they were matched with their new son. Last year, on their way back from a trip to Florida during fall break, their adoption coordinator called their cell phone and told them about the baby.  They were driving in Alabama and were so excited they drove for miles before finding an exit with a restaurant that promised free WiFi. They pulled into the parking lot of a KFC, got on the computer and, for the first time, saw their new family member.

 

“Oh, Mama,” says Sadie, their 6-year-old daughter,” he looks just like Noah.”

  

Kamron Terry says there has been some tension through this. He says he still feels uneasy with his wife going to a third-world country that is in conflict.  There had been much going back and forth on which parent would make the 20-hour flight to bring Dieudonne back to Shelbyville and which parent would stay home and care for Sadie and her 3-year-old brother, Noah.   

 

“Words cannot describe how anxious and uneasy I am,” Kamron says, adding that if Megan didn’t have escorts who know the country and the adoption process, he would have resisted. 

 

She just laughs:  “I’m uneasy he will forget to feed Sadie and Noah.”

 

It a good-natured type of worry, and Kamron jokes that he is up to the domestic challenge. “If Megan can survive over there, the kids and I can survive over here” he says. 

  

The Terrys’ true journey began last year, when “God yelled at me,” Megan says.  “I dropped Noah off at playgroup, and there were several deaf children in the group.  I got back in the car, and God yelled at me and said he was preparing me for something.  I thought God was telling me to adopt a child with hearing difficulties.  I immediately started learning sign language. Then I started to listen to God more and this just didn’t seem right for our family.”

A work acquaintance of Kamron’s came in his office one day and told him about their successful adoption of their child from the Congo. The Terrys did some research about African adoption and decided that was the course they should take.  They say some people have wondered why go to Africa to adopt a needy child, when there are kids in the United States who need help.

“It’s a good argument,” Megan says, “we always say there are kids all over the world that need help, and you just need to do what you need to do. It is not that one is better than the other – it’s just different.  Here in the United States, there is a system for orphaned children, albeit sometimes not a very efficient system,” Kamron Terry says. “But over there, there is not a system.   They just die.”

The Terrys are on a crusade to make people more aware of the genocide that is happening in the Congo, which is twice the size of Texas. At least 1,500 people die each day because of the civil unrest in the fight for mineral rights.  If the war doesn’t kill them, odds are that malaria will. At least 400 children die daily of this disease.  And sexual violence against women and female children are the worst of anywhere in the world.  Megan has been blogging about their experience—at terryhousehold.blogspot.com – seeking to shed light on their efforts in that country and its children in crisis.  

“It started out pretty humbly,” she says. “It was a way for me to get my feelings out.  We shared it with our family, then our Sunday school class. Soon 200 to 300 people were reading it. Now we have about three thousand followers in 20 countries that check our blog each week.”

Through this blog Megan and Kamron were able to raise $5,000 for formula, food and supplies that Megan will take with her and distribute to several orphanages throughout the area.  They both loved and enveloped how they feel, not only from their families but also from the members of Centenary United Methodist Church, where the Terry’s are members of the Sanctuary Sunday school class.

“I’ve had a lot of anxiety how this would work for us, but we have been wrapped up in love and support and amazed about how much people have been willing to learn about the Congo for us,” Megan says.

This process has produced at least one minor miracle.  Megan recently placed a photo of Dieudonne on her blog, where it was spotted by a volunteer with the organization Hope For The Children of Africa (a division of the Northwest Pacific Conference of the Methodist church). The volunteer said there were tons of pictures of the kids at Jamaa Letu Orphanage that he was posting on Facebook. She didn’t see her Miles.

“So I sent him an E-mail,” she says, “and told him that my son’s name was Dieudonne and asked if he had any pictures of any kids by that name. I knew it was a long shot.  But he sent me back an E-mail and said he had one Dieudonne in the bunch and it just happened to be our Miles Dieudonne!”

 More information 

There are 5 million orphans in the Congo. Most children have lost their parents to either civil unrest or illness. 

The agency that the Terry’s are using is a volunteer-based agency located in Washington state that is supported by the Pacific Northwest Methodist Conference. For more information on this plight, visit www.ourfamilyadoption.org.